Searching for the No-Armed Office Chair

            On Monday I stayed up until 1:30 and so I got an hour less sleep than usual. When I was about to hit the sack it felt very cold and there was a lot of noise in the hallway. I went out to check if the heat was on and my neighbour Benji was mopping the hall floors and he had the back door propped open letting a cold draft in. He usually mops the floors in the late morning so maybe he had insomnia or something. He was oblivious in his hat and jacket to the fact that the draft would be coming in to other people’s apartments. I hope he doesn’t make a habit out of this new time of mopping. 

            I finished working out the chords for the first verse of “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden) by Serge Gainsbourg and most of the instrumental before the second verse. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I was at my computer in the late morning when I found a bedbug on my mouse hand. That’s the third time that’s happened since last summer. I haven’t found any around my bed for the last couple of days. I’m pretty sure my desk was also sprayed last Wednesday. I’m still waiting for the spores that were sprayed three weeks ago to take effect and start killing off the bedbug population. 

            At 12:15 I left to ride up to Topcuts at Yonge and St Clair to get a haircut from Amy. I got there just in time but she was running a little late with another customer. I was surprised when Amy told me she she’s 48. I told her she looks 35 and she said I made her day. After we were done she put her hand on my shoulder and looked concerned because she noticed that I’d lost weight. I told her I’d been cutting back on desserts. 

            On my way south on Yonge Street I looked for furniture stores but only found one place in Rosedale called In Style. They had some armless office chairs but they were white. The guy said they had others on their website but that means nothing to me. 

            I stopped at Canadian Tire at Davenport but they only sold one white office chair and it had arms. 

            At College Park I went into The Brick and saw they had office chairs but none were armless. The manager, who looked fresh out of high school, said their store at Dufferin and Dupont is bigger and might have some of the armless ones that they offer on their website. 

            At Eaton’s Centre, I walked all around the mall and there was only one furniture store, but the upscale place had no office chairs. 

            I went into the Source to look at monitors. I couldn’t tell the difference between the ones being used to demonstrate other products and the monitors on sale. Their focus seems to be on gaming monitors although I don’t know what the difference is. I looked this up and found that gaming monitors don’t always have the quality of resolution of regular monitors. 

            I stopped at a furniture place in the west end but it was closed. So far I’ve found four places with armless office chairs and Walmart still has the best deal. I’ll check out three more places before I decide. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos before a late lunch a little after 16:00. 

            I took a late siesta from 16:40 to 18:10. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 18:25. 

            I was caught up on my journal just before dinner. I had a potato with gravy, and two chicken wings while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, two travelers named Tick and Tock are lost in Transmellvania because when Tock packed for the trip there had been no room for both a map and his comic books. They find a village but no one will let them in and so they sleep in what seems to be an abandoned castle. That night what appears like a vampire emerges from a coffin and Tock runs, leaving Tick behind. 

            Astro Boy and Mr. Pompus are asked to find the missing Tick, so they take a plane to Transmellvania. They go to the castle but the coffin is gone, leaving a coffin-shaped rectangle on a dustless part of the floor. They find a picture of the vampire that Tock saw, standing beside a much younger Dr. Elefun. 

            They spend the night in the castle and the vampire emerges from the lake. It enters the castle and grabs Tock. Astro Boy sees the vampire running away carrying Tock and goes after them. The vampire has a ring that shoots heat blasts. Astro Boy knocks him out and ties him up in his own cape but he recovers, sticks his hand out and uses the ring to melt Astro Boy’s feet. Dr. Elefun has to repair him but it will take two weeks. 

            Elefun says the man in the picture with him is Dr. Ray Sergum, who was an expert on the part of Atlantis called Poseidon. It sank into the ocean 12,000 years ago. Pompus has the lake near the castle drained and finds the coffin, but out of it flies a giant robot bat that shoots rapid-fire bullets out of its eyes. Back at the Institute, a bat delivers a note to Elefun. He goes to a park where he meets Dr. Sergum. Sergum tells him that ten years ago he entered a new volcano and inside the crater he found Poseidon, perfectly preserved. There he learned that after Poseidon sank the super-advanced civilization transformed themselves so they could live without sunlight and also live forever. Sergum had the scientists of Poseidon transform him as well. But the only problem is that their people can’t reproduce and so they need to kidnap young people. 

            Astro Boy is repaired and fights the robot bat ship. He forces it to land and release its captive humans. Astro Boy confronts Sergum in the sewer, then punches a hole in the ceiling causing the sunlight to come in and destroy him. 

            In the second story, three robots escape from slavery in a foreign country and arrive by ship to North America. But three agents from their government are pursuing them. The robots disguise themselves as a human family named Pong, with the father being Mr. Pong, his wife Bibi Pong and their son Pal Pong. They move in next to Astro Boy and become friends. 

           Meanwhile, Dr. Elefun needs Astro Boy to investigate the eruption of volcanoes under the south Pacific. 

            The agents once again find the Pongs so they escape to a lighthouse where they hide. Astro Boy discovers that a tidal wave is on its way and so evacuations are ordered and people begin putting up barriers on the coast. It’s also approaching the lighthouse and the agents are waiting outside for the Pongs to come out. Astro Boy rescues several people. 

            Elefun invents a freezer bomb that has to be detonated offshore but while carrying it Astro Boy collapses because his activator tube wore out. Mr. Pong sacrifices his own activator tube to save Astro Boy. Once recovered Astro Boy delivers the freezer bomb and the wave freezes just before reaching land. The Pongs surrender to the agents but on the boat, the leader realizes that he and the other agents would be dead if not for Pong and so he pushes the Pongs overboard so Astro Boy can collect them. I went to bed an hour late again.